Scientists at the University of California Davis Center for Comparative Medicine (CCM) seek support for a quantitative nucleic acid sequence detection system (ABI PRISM 7700 Sequence Detection). The CCM is a new research and teaching center that is co-sponsored by the Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. The CCM research mission is investigator of host-agent interactions and development of intervention strategies for infectious diseases common to humans and animals. Many infection/diseases are shared by both humans and animals, or induced by closely related agents in humans and animals. CCM interdisciplinary research programs also provide a rich academic environment for professional, graduate and post-graduate training within the Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. Although faculty recruitment is still underway, several CCM faculty research programs alone, and need will expand as faculty recruitments progress. Virtually all of the projects featured in this application are using end-point, competitive PCR reactions for quantitative PCR. Such approaches are time-consuming, costly, less sensitive and less reproducible. The requested equipment will greatly enhance all of our research programs and clearly qualifies as a universally needed shared instrument for our research center.